Welcome to a blog about my not-so-little obsessions, including make up, nail polish, books, music and travelling. :)

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Makeup Revolution Lock & Load palette review and looks

Hello darlings! How are you doing? Today I have a long overdue review for you. In the latest package I received from licila.si, I got also a pocket-sized palette called Lock&Load. Colours looked absolutely gorgeous and I couldn't wait to try them ASAP. This post is going to be a bit picture heavy, since I made three looks for the review only and I tried to make decent swatches and all in all - it's good to have pictures of the eyeshadows in reviews, right? It is quite a lenghty post as well, I tried to break it into subchapters with titles, hope that helps.

The post will be in English, however, there is going to be a short summary in Slovene in the end. I would love to do the complete translation as I did the first time, but I seriously lack time, so I am shamelessly stealing the elegant idea of a summary from a lovely Slovene blogger Petra from Adjusting Beauty, I do hope she wouldn't mind. :)

The package, as shown previously.

About the packaging

The palette is quite small - if you don't count the sharp edges of it, it's the same size as my cell phone, comparing to Sleek and MUA palettes it is cca. 1 centimetre shorter and about 0,5 cm narrower and thinner. The pans are a bit small, with a wider brush you need to be a bit careful when grabbing the eyeshadow. It opens on a button and it opens and closes well, I first thought I'll need tweezers to open it, as I do with most of my palettes, but I do not, and my nails are safe! Extra points for that!

The eyeshadows do not have any names, alas, I like it when they do. There is a rich choice of 14 shades and two eyebrow colours in it. I like the choice of colours they put in, there isn't too many neutral ones, but enough that you can use it for everyday look as well, but there are some really awesome bolder, colourful ones in there. Honestly, when I saw the set, my head almost exploded from all the possibilities and combinations.

The looks

I did three looks for this review only, otherwise I use the eyeshadows quite regularly. First look I did with the copper eyeshadow, which is IMO a total winner of this palette, it is a total stunner. Naturally I need to try the blue one as well (love the copper&blue combination) and then I used the blue-purple one for a pop of colour.

I loved this look, the colours are stunning. I also used the dark eyebrow colour on my eyebrows and I liked the effect.

The second look I did with the greens and the darker browns.

Excuse the bluish tinge on the middle photo, I do not know what happened. Ah, but I do love green eyeshadow. :) I used the Essence black eyeliner here as well. Both greens were used and both shimmery browns above the dark green.

The last is a neutral one, with all brown eyeshadows. It is also a look that photographed the hardest, I just cannot take a decent photo of a neutral look, it always looks too faded. It looked better IRL.

WTH did I do with my eyebrows for this look? Or didn't do. Sheesh. Sorry! Anyway, for this I used the first four eyeshadows on the left side of the palette.

All the eyeshadows perform really well throughout the day, they do not fade away, and they started to crease only after entire day of wearing, after 7+ hours. My eyelids are oily, I always use primer (ATM ArtDeco one), usually also a cream eyeshadow, to make the colours pop.

Swatches on my hand
And my try and the swatches of the set. All the swatches are made over primer and with two brush swipes.

Pigmentation

The left side of the palette is really well pigmented, with only chalkier black eyeshadow. The right sideloses the battle thanks to the matte brown and purple eyeshadows and again chalky black with tiny sparkles. The mattes really give poor pigmentation, especially the purple one. The shimmers are gorgeously pigmented and easy to use.

The eyebrow set

If you are curious of how the eyebrow set compares to Essence set, I did a quick photo of it. You can also see how disastrous my Essence set looks like and why I hate their packaging.

The set crumbles if you only look at it wrong. Horrible. The dark eyeshadow in Lock & Load is a bit lighter, comparing to the darker one in Essence, which is perfect for me, as the Essence one was a tad bit too dark (but still manageable), so I will gladly use the one in the palette instead. The light one in the L&L however, looks a bit too yellowish to my taste, but maybe it works for fair ladies?

Dupes of HE eyeshadows?

I also read on a blog somewhere Lock & Load is supposed to be a decent almost-dupe to Urban Decay Vice 2 Palette. Looking at the swatches at Phyrra's, I can't say I agree with that. Perhaps you get a good twin to the shades Betrayal (that one is kind of spot on, actually), Rewind, Habit, Dope and Ambush; but I wouldn't really call them dupes and the rest are not even close. So if you are looking for a good dupe for Vice 2, Lock and Load might not be the right address, unless you are looking for Betrayal dupe, those two are pretty close.

To sum up ...

All in all I think this is really a lovely palette. The pans could be bigger, to be more comfortable for applying, but as this is supposed to be your "travel" palette, it is smaller and more compact, so you can't really argue with that. The real gem of the palette is definitively the copper shade, it is absolutely stunning and extremely well pigmented and easy to use. The second and third favourite certainly are the dark blue and the purple-blue ones, but the greens and the browns are lovely as well. I am not too fond of the both black eyeshadows in here, as they are a bit chalky and I really want my black eyeshadows to be pitch black. Plus the mattes are not well pigmented and they dust like hell, luckily there's only three of them (light brown, black and purple). :) The highlighter colour and the eyebrow shades are good too, so all in all there are definitively more pros than cons to the palette.

Where to buy

Slovene ladies can get the palette at licila.si for 5.95€, at the Makeup Revolution site it costs £4.00. I would recommend it to you for shimmery shades, especially the already mentioned copper, blue and blurplish one. Do not grab it for the matte ones. It is a sturdy palette, smaller, great for taking it around with you (as I did and do, since I move from one city to another quite frequently lately), with a nice combo of colours, for neutral or bolder look. Although it is supposed to be a travel size palette it doesn't have a mirror, but it does take care of your eyebrows in one go, so there's a plus. :)